WUNRN
AUSTRALIA - CHALLENGES FOR
EQUAL WOMEN'S REPRESENTATION
IN LEADERSHIP, IN GOVERNMENT AND IN
THE PRIVATE SECTOR
By Neena Bhandari
SYDNEY, May 24, 2010 (IPS) - Australia may be the land of
the ‘fair go’, yet not all seems fair where equal representation of men and
women is concerned.
When Judith Troeth twice attempted a pre-selection for a
seat in Australia’s Victorian state parliament in the 1980s, she was
unsuccessful. "It was a rural seat, and being female with five children
didn’t help," said Troeth, who persevered and eventually made a successful
political career.
But over two decades later, Australian women are still
under-represented in leadership and decision-making roles in both the public
and private spheres despite comprising 50.6 percent of the country's total
population and 45 percent of the country’s total workforce.
"In recent years, the percentage of female candidates
and members of parliament has been falling, as I believe women look at the
success rate and decide to give it a miss," said Troeth, who was first
elected to the Federal Senate in 1993 at age 52.
Following the 2007 federal election, women occupied 26.7
percent of House of Representative seats and 35.5 percent of Senate seats.
While 35.7 percent of the ruling Australian Labor Party (ALP) members of
parliament (MPs) are women, only 25.3 of Liberal Party MPs are females.
The ALP, in 2002, adopted a comprehensive affirmative action
model of 40:40:20, whereby a minimum of 40 percent of relevant positions shall
be held by either gender by 2012, but the opposition Liberal Party has preferred
to preselect candidates on merit and has rejected a quota system.
"The merit argument is clearly not working, and we need
more progressive methods of selection," Troeth told IPS.
Several countries have adopted some form of quota to ensure
greater participation of women in parliament. In March this year, the largest
democracy in the world, India, passed a legislation granting 33 percent of all
legislative seats to women.
In Australia, a debate is heating up on whether the
government should impose a quota to ensure women reach the highest echelons of
their professions or let businesses take action to remedy this imbalance.
Women hold only two percent of the chief executive officer
positions and 8.3 percent of board directorships in the Australian Securities
Exchange (ASX)- listed 200 companies, according to the 2008 census by the
government’s Equal Opportunity for Women in the Workplace Agency.
To improve gender diversity, from July this year, the
ASX-listed companies will need to publish in their annual reports the number of
women on boards, in senior management and within organisations. Meanwhile, the
Australian Institute of Company Directors (AICD) has launched a mentor
programme to encourage some of the country’s top women executives to get on
company boards.
"We are heartened by recent moves from the ASX and AICD
to increase female representation on boards. However, the Australian government
has no plans to legislate to impose quotas for female corporate
directors," Australian Minister for the Status of Women Tanya Plibersek
told IPS.
"What nation can afford to set aside 50 percent of the
talent largely on the basis of gender and expect to be internationally
competitive?" said Elizabeth Broderick, Sex Discrimination Commissioner of
the Australian Human Rights Commission.
Broderick said the government must lead the way in bringing
about gender equality by ensuring that in the next five years, women equally
share power, at a 40:40 ratio, at decision-making boards not only in the
private and public sectors but also in education, health, sport and
non-governmental organisations.
"In this country, 90 percent of unpaid caring
responsibilities are still shouldered by women whereas paid work is largely a
man’s domain. Changing this paradigm to bring in greater equality will benefit
society at large," Broderick told IPS.
In 2008, while 38.2 percent of women were employed full-time
and 28.8 percent on a part-time basis, 72.4 percent of men were employed
full-time and only 9.6 percent were working part-time, according to the
Australian Bureau of Statistics.
"Equality quotas allow discriminated minorities
(whether implicitly or explicitly) a fair go," said Sharan Burrow,
president of the Australian Council of Trade Unions, which has strongly supported
gender-balancing quotas that will help women overcome obstacles within the
workplace.
Australia has slipped to number 41 in women’s workforce
participation despite ranking high on women’s educational attainment in the
Global Gender Gap report released by the World Economic Forum last year.
Women account for approximately 50 percent of lecturing
staff in Australian universities, but only 24.5 percent of academic staff are
above the senior lecturer level.
"We need more women in university senior management
teams and as deans and heads of schools. This not only gives female students
important role models but also has a positive influence on the culture and
collegiality," said Professor Carol Adams, Acting Dean of the Faculty of
Law and Management in LaTrobe University, Melbourne.
While those who favour quota say it is one way of bringing
women’s merit out into the open in a patriarchal society, others argue it
compromises with merit.
The peak body for women lawyers associations in Australia,
the Australian Women Lawyers (AWL), said, "a quota system would be a
short- rather than a long-term solution that would ultimately cause unnecessary
criticism to those appointed under such a plan." Currently, three out of
seven judges in the Australian High Court, the apex court in the country, are
women.
"To ensure that our profession is representative of the
population it serves, the government needs to focus on issues surrounding the
retention of women within the profession, not setting a minimum quota for
appointments," AWL president Olivia Perkiss told IPS.
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